


Death's Lover Went Riding

by Kennel_Boy



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Animal Death, M/M, Period-Typical Racism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2019-10-19 11:28:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17600483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kennel_Boy/pseuds/Kennel_Boy
Summary: Goodnight Robicheaux died at Rose Creek.Billy Rocks will see that there's a reckoning for for that.But he's not the only one with an interest in Goodnight's death.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to hawthornetaylor for the beta and dancinbutterfly for the concrit!

“I got him!”

The glint of light as the Gatling swings to bear on the church steeple draws both their eyes. For once, Goodnight is faster. He shoves Billy down the throat of the tower just as the climbing hail of gunfire reaches the belfry.

Billy catches himself on the ladder, but can’t climb fast enough to pull Goodnight down with him. Goodnight screams, wood splinters. Nothing, for an instant. Then a terrible thumping against the roof chases him down the ladder. The distant, sickening impact of flesh and bone against the dusty earth hits him before he's anywhere near the bottom.

That’s the last thing Billy Rocks remembers before Sam Chisolm finds him kneeling beside Goodnight’s body in the shadow of the church eaves. They exchange words, he and Sam. From the stricken look on Chisolm's face, Billy suspects his own were not kind, but none of them are important enough to recall.

The shadows thin and stretch as the day moves on without him. He allows people to pull him away from Goody without a fight. There’s a bullet in his shoulder. He can’t bury Goody if he can’t lift his arm. 

There are others more seriously wounded, and Billy is impatient by the time the doctor finally comes to dig the bullet out. The man probes the wound with exhausted, unsteady hands. It’s an annoyance. Billy needs to remember what Goody tried to tell him the night before. Why he was so desperate the speak about the owl this time. What he was trying to warn him about. And the scrape of metal on bone is distracting him from that urgent, half-remembered thread of understanding.

He doesn’t kill the doctor. Once the wound is packed and bandaged, he goes looking for Goody.

The townsfolk get in his way. They thank him with hesitant words while standing out of arm’s reach, they assure him of welcome and rest without meeting his eyes. But they also move away quickly enough that he doesn’t have to cut a path through them to find where they took Goodnight.

The undertaker survived. He, his wife, and assistant are already busy among the dead. Goody and Horne were given first accommodations, but their coffin lids aren’t in place yet. Billy realizes he doesn’t know what happened to Faraday. Nor does he care. 

Goody doesn’t look peaceful. His eyes, dulled and clouded over now, with no laughter or fear to light them, are half-open. His mouth hangs slack, as if he’s surprised to see Billy. He can’t be surprised to be dead. He’d known what could happen…

He’d known what _would_ happen.

No one interferes as Billy nails down the lid. The blows come slow and heavy. Something is wrong with him, but he can’t think of what. It doesn’t matter. He has to look after Goody. And he has to remember what Goody was trying to tell him.

He doesn’t remember catching one of the riderless horses still milling around the town, or choosing the gravesite. The next moment that matters is standing alone atop a low hump of land that barely qualifies as a hill, breaking sod with a shovel blade.

Digging the grave is more laborious than lifting the hammer. His wounded arm stops obeying him early on, and he has to sit and rest. A sip from his canteen scratches up a recent memory: smacking the empty canteen against Goody’s chest in annoyance at his having not filled it before sharing it out. 

There will be no more entertaining themselves with small squabbles. No more private jests in plain sight, no more shared cigarettes. No more Goody.

The pain hits like a marksman’s bullet. Billy crumples. The tears come in an unstoppable swell, and he weeps with impotent rage at being left behind a second time in as many days, and the desolation of this sudden and unwanted half-life. The grief rips through him like a storm, a terrible, primal force that splinters his defenses and leaves him a battered husk, prone upon the earth with scarcely the will to draw his next breath. Exhaustion hooks its claws into him and tows him down into the dark. 

Billy Rocks sleeps beside a ragged scrape of a grave, his brow pressed beseechingly against the boards of Goodnight Robicheaux's coffin.

* * *

Billy opens his eyes to a grey dawn. Someone’s thrown a blanket over him. He sits up, cries out at the bolt of hot agony that shoots through his arm. He’s not enough himself to feel shame at the weakness.

Sam Chisolm sits at a campfire, not more than one good knife-throw beyond arm’s reach. He’s come alone, not even Horne or Faraday with him, let alone the living. Billy appreciates that. 

There’s coffee and bannock bread over the fire. The thought of food makes Billy’s stomach turn, but he accepts it when Sam offers. If he doesn’t eat, he can’t work. And this is work he needs to be done with. He needs to get moving.

Sam doesn’t have much to say. It’s Billy who speaks first, when his arm quits on him an hour into the work and he’s forced to sit off-side while another man digs Goodnight’s grave.

“Did Goody ever talk to you about the owl?” He sounds enough like Billy Rocks that it surprises him. A man who’s lost half of himself should sound like someone different.

Sam’s up to his knees in gravedirt. He leans on the shovel a moment, contemplating Billy as much as the question.

“No. I can’t remember Goodnight ever attaching any importance to an owl.”

Sam waits, obviously expecting Billy to elaborate. Billy only grunts and sinks back into his own thoughts. Sam rode with Goodnight for years. They owed each other their lives half a dozen times over between the two of them...

(and now Sam owes Billy Goodnight’s death)

If Goodnight had come out of the war with the owl’s talons in him, Sam would know. Billy hauls himself to his feet and picks up his shovel. The answers will come to him. They have to.

* * *

They finish before noon. 

Sam asks if Billy wants to say anything, seems not in the least surprised when Billy shakes his head. Sam hands over Goodnight’s hat. Billy nods his thanks, turns the crushed and bloodstained thing over in his hands, then tosses it atop Goody’s coffin.

Sam’s known Goody longer. He shovels the first load of dirt. Billy doesn’t care much now. He just has to get this chore finished. Once he’s moving, he’ll remember what he needs. 

He walks back to town with Sam. More accurately, he can’t outpace Sam. They find Goody’s horse dead in the street, most of its head blown to meat by Gatling fire. Goody had been fond of that horse. Maybe it’s a good thing it’s dead, then; Billy can’t afford to be sentimental right now. Goody’s saddlebags are still there. Billy hauls them over his good shoulder, leaves the saddle. 

Billy’s mare is still in the livery corral. She’s as bullet-ridden as Goodnight’s gelding, but took longer to die, from bloody churn of the mud around her body. He’ll have to help himself to another of the unclaimed horses once he has his gear sorted. He turns back toward the street without a word.

Sam is still with him. Billy pretends he’s not. He doesn’t have the energy to shoulder Sam’s guilt, and he doesn’t have the patience for his concern. _Watching out for me won’t bring Goody back,_ he wants to say. 

The townsfolk are loading bodies into wagons. The murdered citizens of Rose Creek are laid shoulder to shoulder. Respectful. There’s one wagon where corpses are piled carelessly high, as if no one wants to be bothered with more than one trip to haul off that lot. There’s a body fresh-laid at the back of the pile, poorly placed, almost ready to roll off into the dirt. This corpse is better dressed than those around it - the dark suit, embroidered vest, and frock coat sets it apart from the mercenaries in their boot and dusters.

Sam notes the body that’s drawn his attention. “Yeah, that’s Bogue.”

Billy doesn’t remember moving. Someone shouts, high and alarmed. Another someone screams.

Sam grips Billy’s wrist. That anyone dares to touch him snaps Billy back to the moment.

Bogue’s face is a mess of shredded flesh. His mouth has been sliced open back to the hinges, and his jaw hangs wide open in a grotesque, puppet’s smile. His tongue dangles out the side of that helpless expression, swaying at the end of a thin scrap of muscle.

The knife in Billy’s hand is bloody. Flecked with flesh. Like he’s some damned butcher.

A fog rolls in over the world, and then he’s falling.

* * *

Billy sits up in bed, his arm on fire. He draws Goodnight’s scent with every breath and can’t understand why he’s not there or think of where he would have gone…

He’s in the room he and Goodnight shared in The Elysium. Orange light and restless, dusty air filter in through the bullet holes riddling the walls. The window is, miraculously, intact.

Billy slumps back to the pillow, breathes in the last of Goody clinging to the pillowcase. 

He knows now. It was in the early days with Goody, when they had shared a bloodier, rougher life. When death had been a constant companion and the larger part of their livelihood. Bounties that they almost always deemed more expedient to take in dead than alive. Vicious, furtive brawls in barely-lit barns that left Goodnight and Billy walking away with money in-hand and some other transient left for his fellows to bury. 

Goodnight’s sleep had been haunted for as long as Billy had known him. But now memory clicks into place like cocking a pistol, and he recalls when the ghosts of war became the lesser of Goodnight’s specters:

Not that far from the Nevada border, in a mean, lawless mockery of civilization called Bodie. They’d met their mirror selves there, not some untrained farmer or drifter looking for an easy fight, but an agent moving through with his prize fighter, a light-skinned Negro a foot taller and several handspans broader than Billy, muscle on muscle.

He remembers the barn. Chill and dim. Both of them stripped to the waist, looking more fearsome for their scars. His opponent, swift for all his size, taking a swing at him. Aiming low for Billy's throat in an oddly wide swing. The swing missing, but leaving a line of fire. The wound was little more than a scratch, not even enough to bleed. And if Billy had been a hair slower, he’d have bled his life out onto the dirty straw of a hay bale arena. Billy had the man’s wrist locked in a two-handed grip before he had a chance to regain his balance. Bent it until it dislocated, until the man yelled and opened his hand. Snatched up the finger-length dagger that had been secreted in his opponent's grip, and jammed it into the soft, pulsing life just beneath the hinge of his jaw. Twisted. Let him fall, pumping blood from the hole in his neck. 

The pay-out had been silent, but generous, under the ice-cold fury of Goodnight’s gaze. The anger stayed with him until they were back in their rented room.

“We’re done with that horseshit.” 

Billy resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The aftermath of a fight always meant enduring alternating bouts of pride and fussing from Goodnight. “It’s nothing. What’s our take?”

“Couple hundred. And I mean it, Billy. Goddamn son of a bitch. I should have shot his ‘manager’ while we was at it.”

“Would have been more satisfying,” Billy agreed. “He’s probably the one who thought up the idea.” It wasn’t something they spoke of often, whether the men they killed deserved it or not.

“Well, I’ll think up something else for us,” Goodnight said, his tone making it a promise. “I ain’t putting you back among honorless sons of bitches of that type again.” And then Billy realized this wasn’t just his partner fussing over a near thing. 

“Do I get a say?” he asked, jaw clenched. “Or do you run my life now, and not just my fights?”

“Billy, you know it ain’t like that.”

“Sounds like it from here.” The distinction between willing partnership and desperate necessity was a fine one for them both, but more for Billy than for Goodnight. The reminder of it on the heels of having killed the less deserving man left him bitter and in want of space, but heading out alone into an undoubtedly hostile night was foolish. He peeled off his gloves and vest instead. He wasn’t tired, but heading to bed was the firmest way he could think of to let Goodnight know he wasn’t interested in talking.

The bed frame creaked as Goodnight sat.

“Listen, all right? If you’d been a little slower, you’d be dead. I’d have lost you, Billy.”

“That’s how it’s always going to be, Goodnight. Tonight, some other night, some bounty that gets the drop on us. That doesn’t change just because we’re fucking.” Billy had hated that Goody wanted to keep talking. That he wanted to change how they did things. Billy had always looked to routine and institutions to ground himself - in duty to house and family as his father’s assassin in Joseon, in the unbroken, predictable stretch of hell in the railway camps, in the surety of his own skill. People were unreliable. Shifting. He didn’t invest himself in them. Then came this ridiculous Westerner, who’d made room in his life for a foreign, starving outlaw as if it were nothing. As if they’d been fated to fall in together. And right then, Billy could have cursed his own foolishness in looking to ground himself in as changeable a man as Goodnight Robicheaux. 

“The bloodsport is good money,” he said. “If I’m willing to risk dying to make our living, you can risk getting hurt.”

Goodnight’s breath caught. “It’s more than that, Bill. This life I brought you into, it’s worse than lawless…” The words cracked and dried up and, for once, it seemed beyond Goodnight’s ability to keep talking. Finally, he stood, but went no further than Billy’s discarded clothes. He returned with one of the _madak_ cigarettes Billy had procured for him their last swing near the coast and took his place by Billy’s side again.

Silence stretched out between them, words replaced by the rich scent of tobacco and the bitter, sleepy pall of opium lurking beneath. When Goodnight finally spoke again, the words were slow, as if shoved past his lips by sheer force of will.

“That war made a killer of me, Billy. I didn’t know all I’d signed up for, all that it meant. I just wanted to live.”

Goodnight didn't speak of the war often. Billy never interrupted when he did, never judged. He just let his partner purge himself of whatever self-loathing poison had seeped into his soul. That night, Billy resented it. He didn’t doubt Goodnight’s pain, but he wouldn’t let his partner’s demon’s hold the reins on his life.

“The war doesn’t matter here and now, Goody.”

“Damn it, Bill, listen!”

Goodnight never used that tone with him. He was the only white man who didn’t _order_ Billy to do anything. The shock of it cut through the numbing smoke and struck down Billy’s anger. And when he finally _looked_ at Goodnight, he saw the strain on his face, the corpse-paleness of his skin. The dancing spark at the tip of the cigarette in Goodnight’s shaking hand.

“Goody…?”

“Please, Billy. Please listen.” Goodnight drew in more smoke; there was something desperate and sharp in that breath. “I tried to turn from this path. I didn’t expect it would follow me, Billy…” Repeating his name, over and over, like a man begging to be believed. “I couldn’t end it. And it wouldn’t let me be. Didn’t think it would fall on my home, on my friends. God, Sam…” Goodnight turned his washed-out blue gaze up to Billy, his smile a wan and watery thing. “And then there was you. You the meanest, most competent son of a bitch I ever met, Billy Rocks. And I thought, ‘All right, Goodnight. You need a partner, and this is a man with no ties, nothing to lose. He going to want nothing but a bit of a better life, and you can help him there. We can ride this out, and he needn’t ever know the full cost of it.’ 

“I didn’t expect on fearing to lose you, Billy. Understand? I never meant you no harm, but I didn’t think… I didn’t think I’d ever fear for you. That I’d see the shadow of your death and be unable to bear it.”

“All right, Goody.” Billy hadn’t known what to say to this… confession? Apology? He settled his hand awkwardly on Goodnight’s shoulder. Touch helped sometimes; it anchored Goodnight, put him safely in the present. “We didn’t know each other then. It was… just business. But I care about you now too. And you see I’m all right. It’s nothing but a scratch.”

Goodnight closed his eyes. Tears gleamed briefly on his lashes, crested, then fell.

“It’s not done with me, Billy. It’s never going to be. If I were a stronger man, I’d tell you to just go. Reckon all my strength’s bound up in you these days, and I’m sorry.” Goodnight took a deep, shuddering breath. “Trust me, please, Billy? I swear I’ll think of some other way for us to get by.” 

Billy knew Goodnight for a haunted man. Never a weak one. Those tears weren’t for any fear for himself, but fear for Billy. And the idea that he was this man’s vulnerability, that Goodnight had allowed him to become so, had been like hearing his own weakness from Goodnight’s lips. He hadn’t asked to be Goodnight’s strength. He had never asked Goodnight to lend him the shield of his humanity, to become his comfort and safe harbor. And yet Goodnight had just confessed for them both.

“I trust you, Goody.” Simple words, carrying so much weight. 

They started working out the first of their quick-draw routines the next morning. 

And that bloody night was the last unbroken rest Goodnight had until he died at Rose Creek.

* * *

Billy heads out into the hall, sharpened by fresh purpose, saddlebags over his good shoulder. He’d taken the supplies and money from Goodnight’s bags; with luck he could wire ahead for more funds before word of Goodnight’s death spread too widely. But he wouldn’t count on luck.

Sam Chisolm meets him at the foot of the stairs.

“I’m surprised to see you back on your feet. You overdid it a mite back there.”

Billy doesn’t spare so much as a nod to Sam’s concern.

“Goodnight’s things are upstairs if you want them.” No matter how Billy feels in the moment, Goodnight had considered Chisolm a dear friend. Better his belongings go to a friend than wind up hocked as souvenirs by whoever winds up looting the wreck of the hotel. 

Chisolm lifts his eyebrows.

“You don’t want them?”

“I need to travel light.” Billy moves to step around Sam. Sam steps faster, cutting him off.

“Maybe. But there’s no need to be traveling alone. Vasquez and Red Harvest will be riding out with me day after tomorrow. It might do you some good to come along, help visit some justice on men of no conscience.” 

“That’s not the justice I’m after. There are still Blackstones out there.“ The admission puts Sam off balance again, and Billy pushes past him while he has the chance. 

“Billy. The men that killed Goody got what they had coming to them.”

Billy turns, slow and deliberate. Habit almost brings a hand to his knives. He locks eyes with Sam instead.

“And the men who sent them to answer Bogue’s call are enjoying their blood money while Goodnight rots in his grave. You’re going to call that ‘justice’, Chislom?”

“I call it a good way to get yourself killed. And a good way to get a lot of innocent people caught in the crossfire of a vendetta.” 

Billy scoffs. “If you could let Jack Horne have his three-hundred Crow and still call him a good man, you can let me have this. Or does it make a difference that these men are white?”

He takes some pleasure at the way the lines on Chisolm’s face tighten, but he can tell it wasn’t enough. He’s scored a hit, but not a mortal one.

“Goody was my friend too, Billy.”

“And if you’re half the friend he always said you were, you know damn well he was more than a friend to me.” Billy’s control slips; his voice drops to a snarl. “I loved Goodnight, and he loved me. That was enough for me to follow him here, to risk the losing of him to put your ghosts to rest. Maybe you can live with his ghost now that you’ve gotten your revenge, but I can’t.”

Something in Chisolm’s expression shutters, and Billy knows he’s managed to sever whatever tenuous connection Chisolm had been trying to weave between them.

“I guess you’d better be on your way, then.” Chisolm’s voice has gone flat and cold. “See to it you don’t do anything that’ll necessitate us crossing paths again.”

Billy turns away.

“That will be an interesting day.” 

He steps through the shattered front door of the hotel and onto the street. The sun’s going down, but there’s still enough light to get him out of Rose Creek.


	2. Chapter 2

Three days' ride to Sacramento. Billy might cut the journey by a day if he rides the deep-chested _grulla_ hard, but the urgency that spurred him out into the world fades as Rose Creek vanishes behind him, just one more slowly-dying town among many. A dull sort of anticipation sinks into its place, like the moment just after the opium rolls into his lungs, but stretched out into a days-long, half-remembered blur. 

He eats. He sleeps. He tends his wounded shoulder. He occasionally wonders at the silence around him, then remembers why Goodnight’s not there to hold up both ends of the conversation. 

Billy remembers Goodnight foretelling his own death. How hot and desperate Goodnight’s breath had been against his cheek when he’d turned away, dismissing Goody’s pleading as bad dreams and superstition. 

The bustle of Sacramento stirs him from his fugue. He takes stock of his tasks, simple and straight-forward as if they’re no more than camp chores. First the bank, to draw on their funds before word of Goodnight’s death gets around, then to the Blackstones, to spill the first blood of this newborn vendetta. 

Billy knows it’s most likely he’ll be turned away from the bank, then shot down in the street by Blackstones. Sacramento isn’t some hellspit cattle wallow like Volcano Springs, where he and Goodnight are known as dangerous men. There are a hundred people just in his line of view and gleaming buildings tall enough to turn the streets into canyons. A proper city that he and Goody have seen maybe five times in the decade they’ve ridden together, where even Goodnight’s reputation means little and Billy’s means nothing. 

Even knowing this, Billy walks into the bank to withdraw money in Goodnight’s name. 

The teller smiles from behind his cage, greets Billy by first name and last. He makes polite inquiry about his injury and asks after Mr. Robicheaux. Billy isn’t one to question when chance falls in his favor and gives away nothing. The arm’s healing, Goody’s doing fine. He walks out with Goodnight’s money (their money, really) and directions to the infamous Blackstone offices.

The Blackstone agency isn’t staffed by fools. These are men who’ve earned their enemies. But it’s a sweltering hot day, and the armed men just inside the door are focused on their immediate misery. They don’t expect trouble from a quiet foreigner with his eyes downcast and his arm in a sling, don’t even look at him until he’s close enough to touch. 

Billy’s knives are silent. So are men with bright blades buried in their necks. Even in broad daylight, that silence earns him a few more seconds before the men deeper within the office realize something’s wrong.

Half of those men are dead before they can get their guns free. Most of the others can’t shoot worth a damn in a real fight; they’re clerks and paymasters, not guns for hire. They felt safe here, behind their desks.

They still got a share of the money that paid for Goodnight’s death. Or saw that the ones who did it would be paid.

It’s over quickly. Billy pins one of the clerks to the office’s notice board with another man’s knife, walks out with extra bullets, a spare pistol, and the Blackstone pay ledgers. 

He rides hard out of Sacramento.

* * *

Billy dares a campfire that first night. He needs light by which to commit the ledgers to memory. Lists of names, banks, towns, next of kin. Even Goodnight couldn’t make poetry of this. 

There’s knowledge in Billy’s mind that ought not be there, about how many of those names belong to men dead at Rose Creek. He doesn’t dwell on it. He consults his map, plans his route, and lies down to sleep with the mare tethered nearby.

He dreams of holding Goodnight again. Dreams of him shaken and shamed by nightmares, hiding in the shelter of Billy’s arms. He confesses to Billy in halting, broken words, that they’re being hunted because of his cowardice and faithlessness, that the owl will come to collect him. It’s a memory as much as a dream, but this time, Billy tries to break from his role. He doesn’t lull Goodnight back to sleep with soothing words and drugged tobacco. He asks about the owl.

Goodnight’s eyes are large and pale when he looks up at Billy. They throw off jaundiced light like lanterns on a foggy night. The not-Goodnight thing that’s crept into Billy’s dream nods at him in approval. When it smiles, Goodnight’s lips frame yellowed fangs that glisten wetly in the light of the campfire.

Billy awakes to the blood red line of dawn on the horizon and heads south with the speed of a hunted man.

* * *

Billy knows from the years he and Goodnight spent bounty hunting that it takes more than a name and knowledge of a haunt to find your man, most times. The men he seeks don’t seem aware of this; they all but fall into his path. Fate’s a poor sportsman, and Billy follows her example, killing men in broad daylight or with knives in the dark, however the chance presents itself. One graying gentleman, his arms full of parcels for the lady at his side, catches a bullet between the eyes as Billy gallops down the main street of town. The woman’s screams follow him for far longer than they should have.

The next few killings retain that element of surprise. Word travels far more slowly than Billy Rocks, and he never advertises his motivations; these men don’t deserve to have their names linked to Goodnight’s legend. Eventually, though, someone makes the connection and the wanted posters, complete with a $1000 bounty from the Blackstone Agency, begin to show themselves.

Billy takes more care, but doesn’t alter his course. He ruins his purloined mare within weeks and turns it loose, wind broken and hopelessly saddle-sored, to see to itself. The animal is of no concern. Blackstones tend to be well-mounted, and he has his pick of dead men’s horses.

Billy’s shoulder heals without festering, despite the hard riding and the poor care he provides. It doesn’t surprise him. Maybe an owl has its claws in him now.

* * *

When Billy sleeps deeply enough to dream, he inevitably finds himself in Rose Creek, reliving the day of Goodnight’s death. 

In the most common dream, Goodnight pushes him to safety once more, but there’s no ladder for Billy to catch on the way down. Billy falls endlessly, but he can still hear the gunfire. He hears Goodnight scream, the splintering of wood, and the muffled crunch of bones against earth baked hard as brick in the summer sun. And still he falls, helpless to go to Goodnight, to catch his last breath, or even say his own goodbyes. 

At some point, he realizes he’s dreaming, and wakes resigned and dull. Goodnight’s dead and buried deep. It’s not something he ever truly forgets, even when sleeping. The dream shakes off easy as morning dew. 

There’s another dream, though, another one that’s mostly memory…

It’s the one where he closes his eyes to sleep and opens them sighting a Blackstone down the barrel of his rifle. His lungs are full of dust and smoke, with his thoughts narrowed to the next shot, the next death.

He hears Goodnight coming. The unearthly howl of that rebel yell rises above the dust and din of the fight, echoes up the deadly canyon Emma Cullen’s people have made of the main street. Billy’s grinning when he pulls the trigger and tastes gunsmoke as his target drops. The battle cry washes over him, a warrior’s embrace that sends validation sparking up his spine like chain lightning before Goodnight even comes into view.

Goodnight’s come back, as Billy knew he would.

He throws caution to the wind in that moment, giving himself entirely to the battle. There’s no reason to hold back, no farewells he needs to survive for. They both die here, or walk out together.

He always wakes overflowing with a helpless rage so fierce that it forces tears to his eyes. Outliving Goodnight had never been part of their deal. Where he went, Billy went. That was their pact. That faithless, cat-eyed son-of-a-bitch hadn’t had any damned business saving his life.

The anger burns bright and hot, but always fades quickly. Billy Rocks is not an honest man, but he tries not to lie to himself. And he knows too well that if he’d been the faster that day, he’d have done the same thing to Goodnight.

* * *

The bounty is at $3000 by the end of summer, and the dwindling ranks of Blackstone agents have dedicated themselves to the capture of Billy Rocks. 

It’s not the first time he’s been pursued for the price on his head. The Northern Pacific Railroad sent men after him for months before Goodnight helped him slip that noose. Billy’s wilier and more experienced now, he knows the country better than he did ten years ago. And while people sitting safe in their towns see the Blackstones as agents of law and order, opinion of them is far more mixed when it comes to those who dwell in-between. The Blackstones aren’t friends to miners, farmers, or laborers; they’re more often than not in the pay of landholders, railway barons, and factory owners who can afford the sheen of respectability that comes with that brand of hired gun. More than once, people who might have made trouble for him have turned a blind eye and let him go about his business. 

All the same, he takes no unnecessary chances. There are no fires at his camp. He sleeps with the reins in his hand. And the only human souls to see his approach are the ones he means to kill. And kill he does - even with men and dogs combing the land for him, he finds ways to slip through their net and hold another few Blackstones to account.

One man offers Billy an unexpected gift as he curses him with his final, blood-choked breaths. John Farland, one of the most celebrated Blackstones, is heading up the manhunt. Billy knows the man by reputation. He’s famed for his brutality as much as his efficiency; there will be few who hate Blackstones enough to dare defy him for Billy’s sake.

Billy takes to avoiding traveled roads entirely and cuts his path cross-country, but it’s not enough. He wakes to the baying of hounds, miles away yet, but coming to him as clear as church bells. He swings up onto his horse with a quickening heart, but no panic. No luck lasts forever, and he’s been prepared to die since that first shot in Sacramento. He just doesn’t meant to go easy.

They run him for a punishing week. Whether by chance or design, they keep heckling him north and east, toward the mountains. The first sight of the foothills, with their changeable ground and forests fed by mountain runoff, draws a grim smile to his cracked lips. 

The horse makes it to the treeline before collapsing and gasping its last. Billy collects what little gear he’ll need and heads into cover. The wide open plains and prairies offer him no advantage, but here he has a chance to turn the tables. 

He finds a vantage point on rocky higher ground, hidden by stunted, wind-beaten trees. He sights down the length of his rifle and blows the heads off Farland’s dogs as they crest the lowest hill. It gives away his position, but his odds are better when he’s only got human senses to contend with. He could attempt another few shots as Farland’s men scatter for cover, but instead uses the time to seek a new hiding spot himself. 

Billy leaves the rifle among the rocks for the bounty hunters to find; he’ll move faster without it. He was a killer of men a lifetime before he met Goody, long before the man who would become the love of his life showed him how to handle a gun. Goody’s lessons have been useful, but they never supplanted Billy’s primary skill set - speed and stealth. The deepening shadows of the evening will be of far more use to him than to the bounty hunters. 

The wind is blowing just right to bring Farland’s words to Billy’s ears. He’s smart enough to realize his people will be at a disadvantage on unknown terrain in the dark. He calls to make camp, says they can run Billy down on horseback come morning. One man argues to continue the chase. Farland strikes him, curses him for a fool. He’s right. The man presses on regardless. Maybe he’s hungry for the glory of this bounty. Maybe Billy’s killed someone he knew. Maybe the dogs were his.

It doesn’t matter. When the fool blunders into Billy’s patch of shadow, Billy sheathes a knife between his ribs, piercing his lungs. It’s almost bloodless. The last breath of his life exits in a pained sigh, carried away by a friendly breeze.

Billy waits until full dark to pick his way toward Farland’s camp. It’s all the easier following the smell of woodsmoke and the unsteady light of their campfire between the trees. He can’t even fault them for the carelessness of a fire; they still think they’re the ones hunting him.

He hunkers down beyond the reach of firelight and takes stock. The horses are lead tied, not hobbled, and tethered close together on top of that. He listens with amusement as Farland tells his men every torture he intends to inflict on Billy while still leaving him alive to parade through Sacramento. The men are edgy about the absence of the fool, but eventually, they set their watch and try to sleep. Billy commits their relative positions to memory as the campfire burns down. 

When Billy rises to his feet, it’s in complete silence. The whole world is shadows and half-hidden shapes, but it doesn’t matter. There’s a sense of inevitability to this, as if he’s been given some vital information that will let him slip unscathed through this battle. All he has to do is set things in motion, close the loop.

These are the thoughts of a madman. The truth of it is that he’s unmounted and cornered in the middle of nowhere. Even if he turned and ran now, they’d ride him down before noon. He fights or he dies. Most likely, he’ll die anyway.

Billy understands this. But the quickening of his heart, the thundering pulse of blood and razor focus that remind him he's walking the edge of death, doesn’t come. He unsheathes a knife, takes his pistol in hand, and moves as if in a dream.

He pulls the trigger once. A horse screams as the bullet tears into its flesh; it rears and plunges in silhouette, kicking out in pain and terror, inciting a panic as it strikes the others. The two men beside the embers jolt awake, yelling in confusion. Billy sends his knife flying into the dark; one man quiets. He draws second knife and lunges at a prone shape in the dark. An empty fist thuds against his ribs, but doesn’t hinder him. The blade plunges into flesh, scrapes against bone. Warmth gushes over Billy’s fingers; the body beneath him spasms. He knows death when he feels it and pushes away, back into the shadows, straining his senses for any sign of the man on watch. 

The horses are still in a panic, snorting and fighting against their tethers. It’s not until a hoof crunches down on something wet that Billy realizes his distraction was of even more use than he’d hoped.

He builds the fire back up and takes in the scene. The man on watch must have been near the horses when Billy fired, or perhaps he ran to them first; his head’s kicked in and the rest of him is a wet, trampled mess. Farland’s tangled in his blankets, a bloody hole in his throat; he grips Billy’s knife in one hand. The last of his men stares up at the sky, the hilt of a knife sticking from his chest.

Billy turns from his handiwork and hunts through the camp. He’ll need to retrieve his saddle and possessions from his dead horse, but the money and supplies Farland’s men had on them will keep him going for a while. 

It occurs to Billy that the bounty might actually be useful. If Blackstones come to him instead of making him hunt them down, that will just save time.

He’s not sure why the thought occurs to him, or why he should worry about how long it takes him to murder every Blackstone in the country. He pauses to mull over this, but no enlightenment is forthcoming. All the same, he works faster. 

Billy isn’t one to question when chance falls in his favor, but he has a suspicion that someone is weighting the dice.

* * *

Billy’s not inclined to tempt fate for no reason, and he makes no assumption that whatever spirit, beast, or god has staked an interest in his revenge will protect him from misfortune brought about by sheer stupidity. But as the season grows colder and the count of dead to his name pile higher, fewer men dog his trail hunting for a bounty they’ll never see. The money he’s scavenged from their camps and corpses sits in his saddle bags, but it might as well be fistfuls of leaves as his stolen supplies run out and his belly begins to rub his backbone. 

The town he picks has the look of dwindling hopes about it. There’s a saloon and a general store on the main street, keeping company with buildings whose windows stay dark, even in the deepening twilight. Maybe they have a mine that’s played out, or water that’s drying up. It’s none of his business. Billy keeps his head down, doesn’t speak more than is necessary for the store clerk to fill his order. The man’s polite, no doubt grateful for any extra business.

The whispers he shouldn’t be able to hear come from two men at the back of the store.

“...I swear it’s him. I saw the wanted posters when I was in Belmont last month.”

“Shit.” The other man falls silent a moment. Billy imagines he can hear his tongue flicking nervously over dry lips. He keeps his hands near his knives as the clerk portions out tack, coffee, and dried beef.

“I’m telling you, Si, there’s eight thousand dollars on his head. Eight _thousand._ ”

Si pulls his companion toward the back of the store. The whispers don’t heed him and stay with Billy.

“I heard you the first time. Now let me tell _you_ a couple things. First, Rocks is wanted for killing Blackstones, including that son-of-a-bitch Farland. My brother’s back in San Francisco, with a wife, a little baby, and legs busted up so bad he ain’t been able to work for almost a year. All because those bastards running the docks decided it wasn’t enough for Blackstones to usher in a bunch of goddamned strike breakers, they should make an example of those on the picket line too. So. That man wants to keep killing Blackstones, I’m not planning to be in his way. And if you’ve got other ideas, you’d best keep them out of my hearing. Right?

“Now here’s the other thing - that man used to ride with Goodnight Robicheaux.”

“The Angel of Death?” Breathed so softly that even Billy has to strain to hear.

“That’s the one. Closer than brothers, I hear tell. And I saw it myself. I was up to Volcano Springs end of spring with Jacoby’s herd. I saw this Billy Rocks take a knife to a quickdraw and win. Put his blade through some mouthy peckerhead’s heart from fifteen paces, all because the man had insulted Robicheaux within his hearing. I never seen anything like it.”

Billy rests his clenched fists on the counter. A hysterical laugh scrabbles around in his chest; he bows his head and bites his lips to keep it contained. 

In all the time they rode together, Billy never heard his name attached to Goodnight’s legend. If he existed at all, he was The Chinaman. The silent servant, acting at Goodnight’s command. Never the first to move or exercise any will of his own.

Now his legend has touched off from Goodnight’s, like lighting a fresh cigarette off the stump of another.

And fuck, it’s just plain funny. Goody would have laughed himself sick at the idea that Arcade was worth the bother of killing for his own sake. The only reason he and Goody had bothered giving that pompous pissant a second glance was because the fool had sweetened the purse until it got worth the trouble of killing him. 

A choked sound that might be a laugh escapes between Billy’s clenched teeth before he regains control of himself.

The clerk finishes with his order. Billy pays and leaves without a word.

* * *

It’s a mild winter, good fortune for a man living in-between civilized spaces. 

There’s a lone rider trailing Billy Rocks south on the rough track of a road to Halve City. The rider’s been closing in for the better part of a day, making no move to hide himself. Could be he’s just another traveler. 

When Billy leaves the road, his pursuer veers off to follow.

The same restlessness that drew Billy Rocks out of Rose Creek with a busted shoulder and a heart full of hate has been gnawing the back of his mind since the Farland kill. It irks him to pause his hunt and deal with distractions, but the rider’s a potential problem that needs to be dealt with. Billy leads him on for another mile or so, until there’s enough scrub around to provide some cover, dismounts, and withdraws his rifle from the scabbard. He judges the man will be within his range within a quarter hour. He doubts he’ll need more than one shot. 

The rider pauses in his approach. He dismounts and continues on foot. Before long, Billy can make out that he has his hands in the air. He trains his rifle on the man regardless, keeps him under threat even once he’s close enough for Billy to see the Blackstone badge pinned to his coat.

“You got a message for me?” Billy asks.

“No, sir. I’m just here to talk.” The rider’s lean and fair-haired, probably not much older than twenty. His horse looks worn to the bone, and the rider’s pale eyes dart nervously from Billy to the rifle and back. “You’re Billy Rocks?”

Billy doesn’t answer the question. He doesn’t suppose he needs to.

“You’re after the bounty.”

“No, sir.” The stranger takes a deep breath. “My name is Daniel. Daniel White. I’ve been trying to catch up to you for a couple weeks now. I signed on with the Blackstones just this May. I’ve got no quarrel with you, sir, not that I’m aware of.”

“That you’re aware of,” Billy repeats, no inflection in his voice.

“I didn’t expect it would make a difference,” Daniel White admits. He swallows hard, visibly gathering his composure. 

“I married in June,” he manages. “That’s why I’m here. I’ve heard about you. About how there’s nothing that stops you killing once you set your sights on a man. And how wives of Blackstones have woke up to find their husband’s throat slit in the night.”

Billy scoffs inwardly. He’s caught wind of some of those stories. Most are vastly exaggerated, but there is truth to this one - there have been women who bedded Blackstones and woke beside corpses thanks to him.

“That’s why I’m here, sir. I didn’t want to chance you might come for me where my Josie might see. So I’d be obliged if we just get it done with here. Just… I’ve got a letter with me, to let my wife know what happened. If you’d honor me a last wish and see it reaches her…?”

A blazing rage consumes Billy at that quiet, uncertain request. The terrible impact of Goodnight’s body against the ground sounds in his ears, loud as thunder.

“You’re a goddamned fool,” he snarls. He pulls the trigger, killing Daniel White’s hopes with the same bullet that splits his heart. 

Billy watches him breathe his last, then turns his attention to the man’s saddle bags. He finds the letter to Josie White easily enough, and tucks it away in his coat. It may be he can get the letter mailed off once he finishes his business in Halve City. There’s no mercy in him for Blackstones, but he knows what it is to be the one left behind.

* * *

The days are getting longer. The world is more mud than snow. The urgency spurring Billy onward has settled into his very bones, and dreams give way to visions on a nightly basis.

He sees Goodnight huddled on a field of grey - overcast skies above and waterlogged ground below. Goodnight’s young, but so pale he seems more his own ghost than the man Billy knows. His cheeks are hollow, his arm in a filthy bandage sling, and he’s drawn in on himself with hunger and suffering. Grey-faced men lie on the ground all around him and the stench of death winds through Billy’s senses with every breath.

Goody looks right through him, but Billy doesn’t care. His heart pulses in his throat and he can’t help but go to Goodnight’s side. He can’t pull this vision of Goodnight into his arms, but he doesn’t care. It might kill him to try and fail, but he fears the ache in his chest might kill him if he doesn’t…

Motion out of the corner of his eyes checks him. They’re not alone. There are men moving among the corpses, some in stained greatcoats, some in shirtsleeves with bloody hands and grave faces. When he looks back to Goody and his sling, he realizes this is no corpse field, but a hospital, with medics going through the bare, hopeless motions of treating men as they rot to death.

“Goody…” Billy crouches beside him in the mud. He’s close enough now to smell it, the pus and foulness bleeding from that arm. When he envisioned Goodnight as a soldier, he’d always pictured him in battle, fierce and lethally calm by turns, dealing endless death. Never had he imagined him brought low by some chance wound. He sees the desperation in his lover’s glassy, fevered gaze, the despair that comes with the helpless knowledge of his own death coming. The hopelessness crushing Goodnight into the mud is palpable enough that it presses the very breath from Billy’s lungs as well.

Goodnight is looking past Billy again, but this time something's snared his attention. Confusion, then fear flash across his face in the space of a breath as he struggles to focus. Billy turns to follow his gaze...

“It’s a bad idea, Bill, so lemmee ‘lone about it!”

The muddy field is gone. There’s a clear, starry sky above. Billy stares across a campfire at Goodnight. This is Goodnight older, the one he knows and loves best, even mulish and half-drunk as he is at the moment.

But what moment this happens to be, Billy can’t be certain. He looks to the fire, the horses, the horizon, searching for clues, but comes up with nothing to anchor him. This could be one of dozens of camps, one of a hundred arguments.

The answer comes to him with the smell of frost on the night air and the helpless shaking of Goodnight’s hands. There’s a sudden bitter taste at the back of Billy’s throat, a mingling of regret and shame and hindsight, but he checks himself this time. Plays his role instead of reaching for Goody.

“I won’t leave it.” His words are low and hoarse. Easily mistaken for anger. “I’m sick of this. You talk my ear off for a hundred miles about surprising this Sam and wintering together in Drytown. Then you have one bad dream, and you want to change all our plans.”

“It doesn’t need to be Drytown. I’ll find us somewhere else.”

“It’s away from the railroad, away from everything, and there’ll be enough people to live off.” He remembers how frustrated he was. How fucking angry he’d been over Goodnight’s changabiltiy. “It’ll be safe, it’ll be cheap - cheaper split three ways. So give me one good reason why we’re turning around now.”

“I don’t have to…”

“I mean it!” Billy snaps. “Or I’m riding on without you.”

Goodnight’s expression crumples in the face of that threat; Billy’s heart breaks in the same instant. Goody hides his face in his hands, but it does nothing to disguise the tremor of his voice.

“I saw the owl,” he manages. 

“This again?” Billy can’t make himself sneer the words as he did then, but he doesn’t think Goodnight hears him anyway.

“I dreamed it, Billy. I dreamed the first time I seen it after the war. It came for Sam. I seen him hanging from that cottonwood tree again, Billy. That cursed owl was in the branches with one foot on the rope. Warning me off…”

“It’s just a damn dream, Goody.”

But Billy’s listening now in a way he hadn’t years ago. He knows more than he did years ago, about Sam and Goody and the aftermath of the war.

_”I pull that trigger in violence again and I’m gonna die a ghastly death, Billy.”_

Billy wakes in his blankets, gooseflesh crawling over his skin like ants. 

There’s no question in his mind now. Goodnight _had_ known the fate that awaited him at Rose Creek. The owl was real and it had a hold of Goodnight for as long as Billy had known him, for as long as Goodnight had known Sam. And for whatever reason, it’s seeing fit to help him avenge Goody’s death. 

Billy hasn’t lived so long by taking the world at face value. For all its supposed warnings, for all the knowledge and improbable luck it’s given him on his journey, Billy never heard Goodnight speak of the owl as anything but a fearful specter that tormented his dreams. It’s not a friend, and Billy means to stay wary. But for now, he and the owl are allied in common purpose.

Billy Rocks breaks camp, then turns his horse east. He’s not sure how long he’s got now, or what happens when his time runs out, but he means to finish the job he’s set himself, owl or no.


End file.
